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News & Insights | 6th June 2025
Employee Wellbeing
7 Min Read
A strong culture can help every kind of organisation in being successful. Ask any HR Manager in a small creative agency what their secret is, and chances are they’ll mention culture — the kind that feels organic, fun, and deeply personal. But scale up that agency, throw in layers of management, offices in Manchester, Madrid and Mumbai and things get trickier. Culture, once a by-product of proximity, becomes a conscious effort.
So, why do larger companies — even those bursting with talented creative people and well-intentioned leadership — struggle more with employee happiness and strong culture?
There are a lot of academic studies and business books that tackle this subject, but in the interest of time we’ve distilled it down into seven recurring issues, followed by seven things that larger companies should consider.
In smaller teams, culture is passed through direct conversation. Founders say good morning. Leaders walk the floor. There’s often a strong, shared sense of purpose. But as businesses grow, direct communication gives way to cascading messages filtered through managers, PowerPoint decks, and perhaps the occasional awkward video message.
According to a Gallup poll in the US, just 22% of employees in large companies strongly agree that leadership communicates effectively. And if the message isn’t getting through, neither is the culture.
Small agencies can feel like extended families — birthdays are remembered, personal achievements are celebrated, and your Slack profile probably has a custom emoji. But in larger firms, where headcounts stretch into the hundreds or thousands, people can start to feel like cogs in a machine.
Without personal recognition, even great performers can disengage. Nobody wants to be just another name in the all-staff email.
Scale can give birth to bureaucracy, inflexibility and the joys of red tape. While structure is important, excessive process can be a blocker to innovation and responsiveness — especially when employee feedback disappears into the black hole of “we’ll look into it.”
This can leave staff feeling unheard, undervalued, uninspired.
In large organisations, managers play a crucial role in shaping daily experience. But let’s be honest: not every manager is a natural-born culture champion. Some are brilliant at what they do professionally, but never really wanted to manage people in the first place. The more teams, departments and divisions a company has the more likely the quality of people manager will vary, and with it so will the sense of a cohesive culture.
This inconsistency can damage trust and morale. According to the same Gallup poll, managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement — so getting this bit right is mission critical.
Different locations, departments, and teams can create wildly different cultures under one brand umbrella. One office might be hosting Wellness Wednesdays while another is quietly drowning in pitch work for new business.
When culture is inconsistent, fairness gets questioned. And nothing erodes happiness like the perception that your colleague in Manchester has it easier than you in London.
Culture at scale requires intention. Rituals that feel natural in a 12-person team can seem awkward when rolled out company-wide. And let’s face it: forced fun is no one’s idea of a good time.
Big companies often lean on formal programmes and training to reinforce values — but if those feel corporate, insincere, or out of step with real behaviour, they fall flat.
Honesty and openness are sometimes a casualty as an organisation grows. This can particularly be the case within groups where Head Offices are determined to protect the corporate mission and share price at the expense of truth in their messages to staff, creating an ever-growing disconnect with the reality at the coal face.
So What Can Large Companies Do?
It’s not all doom and disengagement. Plenty of large businesses have cracked the culture code. The key is being proactive, strategic, and people-first.
Make sure your managers are equipped — not just with spreadsheets and timelines, but with emotional intelligence, feedback skills, and the ability to deliver inspiring leadership.
Culture is nearly always driven from the top down. If managers are your ‘culture carriers’, then it is important to invest in them accordingly.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, let different teams and regions interpret core values in their own way. Encourage managers and individuals across departments to adapt initiatives that make sense for their people. Think local independent cafés, not corporate chains. Both are selling coffee but one considers the likes and needs of the local community more than the other.
Swap corporate jargon for real talk. Use town halls, short video updates, and two-way platforms like Workplace or Teams to keep the conversation flowing.
Most importantly, act on what you hear. Companies that respond to feedback are 4.6x more likely to have engaged teams (Qualtrics, 2023).
Recognition should be timely, personal, and visible. Whether it’s a public shout-out or a peer-nominated award, celebrating how people work — not just what they achieve — keeps values alive.
And remember, small personal touches that (again) treat people like human beings rather than employees can go a long way.
Culture isn’t just a sign in reception. Make sure it’s baked into hiring, onboarding, performance reviews, and rewards.
If your value is “collaboration” but bonuses only go to isolated loners, the signal gets scrambled.
Try and cut the noise. Regular communication is good but segment your emails. build a smart, searchable intranet, and above all, respect attention spans. According to Gallagher, 60% of employees ignore generic internal emails.
Communication isn’t just about frequency — it’s about making it precise, engaging and relevant.
Track engagement, turnover, and ENPS (Employee Net Promoter Score). Use pulse surveys to stay ahead of the curve — and make sure people see the action that follows. Exit interviews can be a useful learning tool not just for HR but for those tasked with driving culture as well.
If you are going to ask people for their feedback, the one thing worse than not asking for it is to ask the question and then ignore the answer.
Conclusion
Creating and maintaining culture in large companies isn’t impossible — it’s just harder and less automatic.
The trick is to create the spontaneous automatic nature of culture in a small business without stifling it with the bureaucracy and tone-deafness that can be symptomatic of larger organisations.
That of course is easier said than done, but hopefully the seven themes above may help. Ultimately, every employee is also a human being, and we don’t stop being human beings when we go to work. Smaller businesses perhaps find it easier to remember that than larger ones.
